NASA Earthdata
NASA Earthdata is the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) portal providing access to NASA's Earth observation data holdings. It offers REST APIs for searching, discovering, and downloading satellite imagery, climate data, and Earth science datasets from NASA missions including the Common Metadata Repository, Harmony data transformation services, Global Imagery Browse Services, and the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples.
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles NASA Earthdata the way a machine reads it — 12 machine-readable artifacts across 7 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — NASA Earthdata scores 36.5/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile NASA Earthdata
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for NASA Earthdata. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 7
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
CMR STAC API
The CMR SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) API provides a STAC-compliant interface over NASA's Common Metadata Repository, enabling discovery and access to Earth science data c...
Earthdata Login API
The Earthdata Login API provides free and immediate access to thousands of EOSDIS data products covering all Earth science disciplines. It manages user authentication and profil...
AppEEARS API
The Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS) API offers a RESTful interface for submitting and managing area or point-based data extraction tas...
Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) API
The Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) API delivers quick access to over 1,000 satellite imagery products through standards-compliant web services including WMTS, WMS, and Ti...
NASA Earthdata Capabilities API
Essential characteristics of this API including information about the data.
NASA Earthdata Coverage API
Access to data (coverage).
NASA Earthdata OpenAPI API
The OpenAPI API from NASA Earthdata — 1 operation(s) for openapi.
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Plans
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Finops
FINOPSSecurity Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for NASA Earthdata — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 2
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 2
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 1
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/nasa-earthdata · machine-readable index on apis.io